I sat by the window in my room till late, looking out at the moonlight in the quiet garden, with a feeling as though I were stuffed with sawdust — a very awful feeling — and thinking ruefully of the day that had begun so brightly and ended so dismally. What a miserable thing not to be able to be frank and say simply, “My good young man, you and I never saw each other before, probably won’t see each other again, and have no interests in common. I mean you to be comfortable in my house, but I want to be comfortable too. Let us, therefore, keep out of each other’s way while you are obliged to be here. Do as you like, go where you like, and order what you like, but don’t expect me to waste my time sitting by your side and making small-talk. I too have to get to heaven, and have no time to lose. You won’t see me again. Good-bye.”
I believe many a harassed Hausfrau would give much to be able to make some such speech when these young men appear, and surely the young men themselves would be grateful; but simplicity is apparently quite beyond people’s strength. It is, of all the virtues, the one I prize the most; it is undoubtedly the most lovable of any, and unspeakably precious for its power of removing those mountains that confine our lives and prevent our seeing the sky. Certain it is that until we have it, the simple spirit of the little child, we shall in no wise discover our kingdom of heaven.
These were my reflections, and many others besides, as I sat weary at the window that cold spring night, long after the lieutenant who had occasioned them was slumbering peacefully on the other side of the house. Thoughts of the next day, and enforced bed, and the bowls of gruel to be disposed of if the servants were to believe in my illness, made my head ache. Eating gruel pour la galerie is a pitiable state to be reduced to — surely no lower depths of humiliation are conceivable. And then, just as I was drearily remembering how little I loved gruel, there was a sudden sound of wheels rolling swiftly round the corner of the house, a great rattling and trampling in the still night over the stones, and tearing open the window and leaning out, there, sitting in a station fly, and apparelled to my glad vision in celestial light, I beheld the Man of Wrath, come home unexpectedly to save me.
“Oh, dear Man of Wrath,” I cried, hanging out into the moonlight with outstretched arms, “how much nicer thou art than lieutenants! I never missed thee more — I never longed for thee more — I never loved thee more — come up here quickly that I may kiss thee!—”
October 1st. — Last night after dinner, when we were in the library, I said, “Now listen to me, Man of Wrath.”
“Well?” he inquired, looking up at me from the depths of his chair as I stood before him.
“Do you know that as a prophet you are a failure? Five months ago to-day you sat among the wallflowers and scoffed at the idea of my being able to enjoy myself alone a whole summer through. Is the summer over?”
“It is,” he assented, as he heard the rain beating against the windows.
“And have I invited any one here?”
“No, but there were all those officers.”
“They have nothing whatever to do with it.”
“They helped you through one fortnight.”
“They didn’t. It was a fortnight of horror.”
“Well. Go on.”
“You said I would be punished by being dull. Have I been dull?”
“My dear, as though if you had been you would ever confess it.”
“That’s true. But as a matter of fact let me tell you that I never spent a happier summer.”
He merely looked at me out of the corners of his eyes.
“If I remember rightly,” he said, after a pause, “your chief reason for wishing to be solitary was that your soul might have time to grow. May I ask if it did?”
“Not a bit.”
He laughed, and, getting up, came and stood by my side before the fire. “At least you are honest,” he said, drawing my hand through his arm.
“It is an estimable virtue.”
“And strangely rare in woman.”
“Now leave woman alone. I have discovered you know nothing really of her at all. But I know all about her.”
“You do? My dear, one woman can never judge the others.”
“An exploded tradition, dear Sage.”
“Her opinions are necessarily biassed.”
“Venerable nonsense, dear Sage.”
“Because women are each other’s natural enemies.”
“Obsolete jargon, dear Sage.”
“Well, what do you make of her?”
“Why, that she’s a DEAR, and that you ought to be very happy and thankful to have got one of her always with you.”
“But am I not?” he asked, putting his arm round me and looking affectionate; and when people begin to look affectionate I, for one, cease to take any further interest in them.
And so the Man of Wrath and I fade away into dimness and muteness, my head resting on his shoulder, and his arm encircling my waist; and what could possibly be more proper, more praiseworthy, or more picturesque?
THE BENEFACTRESS
This novel was first published by Macmillan in 1901, and, following directly on from the two “Elizabeth” books, it too hints at some autobiographical element to the narrative. However, the author’s true identity remained a secret at the time – the cover of the first edition attributes the tale only to “The author of Elizabeth and her German Garden”.
Twenty-five year old Anna Estcourt feels that her life is stagnating. An attractive, intelligent, unmarried young woman, Anna could have been out and about, enjoying herself, but instead she spends time at home pondering the great philosophical questions of life and existence – the sort of questions, the author tells us, that particularly preoccupy “women, the elderly and [the] plain.”. Fortunately for Anna, she can afford the luxury of time to think about the big questions, as she lives in material comfort with her brother and her wealthy sister-in-law, Susie, although she has no money of her own. For years, Susie has been urging Anna to make more effort to find a rich husband and settle down, taking her to all the fashionable venues to mix with the Edwardian equivalent of the beau monde, but Anna is unmoved; she will not be forced into any course of action that is not of her own making. What Susie cannot grasp is that for Anna, to achieve her independence from living off Susie’s money through marrying a rich man, she is merely exchanging one form of enslavement for another and all within a social set that bores Anna to distraction.
A diversion comes along in the form of Anna’s German maternal uncle, Joachim, who visits her in London. Despite Uncle’s reservations about Anna’s determination to remain unmarried, they are very fond of each other and when he returns home to Germany, he includes Anna in his will, leaving her a small estate near Stralsund in Pomerania that will make her financially independent. Towards the end of the year, Joachim passes away and Anna’s gift of freedom is revealed to her. There is a proviso, however – Uncle Joachim wishes that Anna will make her German estate her home and at some point find a fine German man to marry, neither of which Anna is minded to do.
Curiously, Anna does not seize independence wholeheartedly at first, but travels to Germany to see her estate with Susie, her niece Letty, Miss Leech, Letty’s governess and Hilton the maid, in tow. At first it seems strange that Anna, who has effectively distanced herself from her sister in law, would take so many people with her, but this turn of the plot allows von Arnim to turn the voyage into something of a comedy road trip, which also develops the characters as individuals – the resulting light hearted scenes are nicely written, amusing and feature sharp dialogue.
After a protracted welcome from the local community, Anna arrives at her new house and takes an almost immediate liking to it – “The magic word mine rang in her ears…the strangest feeling of being for the first time in her life at home.” However, much as she finds the area “intensely loveable”, her relationship with the local population gets off to a shaky start. In addition, Susie is so outraged by the lack of propriety and English menu that s
he resolves to leave after only one night’s stay. Anna has one more affront for Susie, however, when she outlines her shocking plans for her own future in her German home…
Von Arnim does have a tendency to portray the local Germans as naïve and childlike, which may grate a little with modern readers, but otherwise her characters are well drawn and distinct. From them, we can also draw interesting social history snippets both German and English, such as Susie’s irrational fear of her snobbish maid, Hilton, who despite her subservient position manages to outrank her mistress due to her previous aristocratic employers – a situation that was no doubt taken from real life observations! Without giving too much away, there is also an aspect of the story that reflects the sisterhood of the feminist movement of the early twentieth century and was no doubt drawn from that time. Once again, in this novel von Arnim creates likeable, believable characters with a strong and appealing female protagonist. There is enough of a sense of adventure here to stimulate von Arnim’s contemporary middle class readership and it undoubtedly appealed to those that liked armchair adventure too. The Benefactress is a light hearted “get away from it all” story with an ending that would assuage the more conservative readers of the day.
The first edition’s title page
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
CHAPTER XXX
CHAPTER XXXI
CHAPTER XXXII
CONCLUSION
CHAPTER I
When Anna Estcourt was twenty-five, and had begun to wonder whether the pleasure extractable from life at all counterbalanced the bother of it, a wonderful thing happened.
She was an exceedingly pretty girl, who ought to have been enjoying herself. She had a soft, irregular face, charming eyes, dimples, a pleasant laugh, and limbs that were long and slender. Certainly she ought to have been enjoying herself. Instead, she wasted her time in that foolish pondering over the puzzles of existence, over those unanswerable whys and wherefores, which is as a rule restricted, among women, to the elderly and plain. Many and various are the motives that impel a woman so to ponder; in Anna’s case the motive was nothing more exalted than the perpetual presence of a sister-in-law. The sister-in-law was rich — in itself a pleasing circumstance; but the sister-in-law was also frank, and her husband and Anna were entirely dependent on her, and her richness and her frankness combined urged her to make fatiguingly frequent allusions to the Estcourt poverty. Except for their bad taste her husband did not mind these allusions much, for he considered that he had given her a full equivalent for her money in bestowing his name on a person who had practically none: he was Sir Peter Estcourt of the Devonshire Estcourts, and she was a Dobbs of Birmingham. Besides, he was a philosopher, and philosophers never mind anything. But Anna was in a less agreeable situation. She was not a philosopher, she was thin-skinned, she had bestowed nothing and was taking everything, and she was of an independent nature; and an independent nature, where there is no money, is a great nuisance to its possessor.
When she was younger and more high-flown she sometimes talked of sweeping crossings; but her sister-in-law Susie would not hear of crossings, and dressed her beautifully, and took her out, and made her dance and dine and do as other girls did, being of opinion that a rich husband of good position was more satisfactory than crossings, and far more likely to make some return for all the expenses she had had.
At eighteen Anna was so pretty that the perfect husband seemed to be a mere question of days. What could the most desirable of men, thought Susie, considering her, want more than so bewitching a young creature? But he did not come, somehow, that man of Susie’s dreams; and after a year or two, when Anna began to understand what all this dressing and dancing really meant, and after she had had offers from people she did not like, and had herself fallen in love with a youth of no means who was prudent enough to marry somebody else with money, she shrank back and grew colder, and objected more and more decidedly to Susie’s strenuous private matrimonial urgings, and sometimes made remarks of a cynical nature to her admirers, who took fright at such symptoms of advancing age, and fell off considerably in numbers.
It was at this period, when she was barely twenty-two, that she spoke of crossings. Susie had seriously reproved her for not meeting the advances of an old and rich and single person with more enthusiasm, and had at the same time alluded to the number of pounds she had spent on her every year for the last three years, and the necessity for putting an end, by marrying, to all this outlay; and instead of being sensible, and talking things over quietly, Anna had poured out a flood of foolish sentiments about the misery of knowing that she was expected to be nice to every man with money, the intolerableness of the life she was leading, and the superior attractions of crossing-sweeping as a means of earning a livelihood.
“Why, you haven’t enough money for the broom,” said Susie impatiently. “You can’t sweep without a broom, you know. I wish you were a little less silly, Anna, and a little more grateful. Most girls would jump at the splendid opportunity you’ve got now of marrying, and taking up a position of your own. You talk a great deal of stuff about being independent, and when you get the chance, and I do all I can to help you, you fly into a passion and want to sweep a crossing. Really,” added Susie, twitching her shoulder, “you might remember that it isn’t all roses for me either, trying to get some one else’s daughter married.”
“Of course it isn’t all roses,” said Anna, leaning against the mantelpiece and looking down at her with perplexed eyebrows. “I am very sorry for you. I wish you weren’t so anxious to get rid of me. I wish I could do something to help you. But you know, Susie, you haven’t taught me a trade. I can’t set up on my own account unless you’ll give me a last present of a broom, and let me try my luck at the nearest crossing. The one at the end of the street is badly kept. What do you think if I started there?” What answer could anyone make to such folly?
By the time she was twenty-four, nearly all the girls who had come out when she did were married, and she felt as though she were a ghost haunting the ball-rooms of a younger generation. Disliking this feeling, she stiffened, and became more and more unapproachable; and it was at this period that she invented excuses for missing most of the functions to which she was invited, and began to affect a simplicity of dress and hair arrangement that was severe. Susie’s exasperation was now at its height. “I don’t know why you should be bent on making the worst of yourself,” she said angrily, when Anna absolutely refused to alter her hair.
“I’m tired of being frivolous,” said Anna. “Have you an idea how long those waves took to do? And you know how Hilton talks. It all gets whisked up now in two minutes, and I’m spared her conversation.”
“But you are quite plain,” cried Susie. “You are not like the same girl. The only thing your best friend could say about you now is that you look clean.”
“Well, I like to look clean,” said Anna, and continued to go about the world with hair tucked neatly behind her ears; her immediate reward being an offer from a clergyman within the next fortnight.
Peter Estcourt was even more surprised than his wife that Anna had not made a good match years before. Of course she had no money, but she was a pretty girl of good family, an
d it ought to be easy enough for her to find a husband. He wished heartily that she might soon be happily married; for he loved her, and knew that she and Susie could never, with their best endeavours, be great friends. Besides, every woman ought to have a home of her own, and a husband and children. Whenever he thought of Anna, he thought exactly this; and when he had reached the proposition at the end he felt that he could do no more, and began to think of something else.
His marriage with Susie, a person of whom no one had ever heard, had brought out and developed stores of unsuspected philosophy in him. Before that he was quite poor, and very merry; but he loved Estcourt, and could not bear to see it falling into ruin, and he loved his small sister, who was then only ten, and wished to give her a decent education, and what is a man to do? There happened to be no rich American girls about at that time, so he married Miss Dobbs of Birmingham, and became a philosopher.
It was hard on Susie that he should become a philosopher at her expense. She did not like philosophers. She did not understand their silent ways, and their evenness of temper. After she had done all that Peter wanted in regard to the place in Devonshire, and had provided Anna with every luxury in the shape of governesses, and presented her husband with an heir to the retrieved family fortunes, she thought that she had a right to some enjoyment too, to some gratification from her position, and was surprised to find how little was forthcoming. Really no one could do more than she had done, and yet nothing was done for her. Peter fished, and read, and was with difficulty removable from Estcourt. Anna was, of course, too young to be grateful, but there she was, taking everything as a matter of course, her very unconsciousness an irritation. Susie wanted to get on in the world, and nobody helped her. She wanted to bury the Dobbs part of herself, and develop the Estcourt part; but the Dobbs part was natural, and the Estcourt superficial, and the Dobbses were one and all singularly unattractive — a race of eager, restless, wiry little men and women, anxious to get as much as they could, and keep it as long as they could, a family succeeding in gathering a good deal of money together in one place, and failing entirely in the art of making friends. Susie was the best of them, and had been the pretty one at home; yet she was not in the least a success in London. She put it down to Peter’s indifference, to his slowness in introducing her to his friends. It was no more Peter’s fault than it was her own. It was not her fault that she was not pretty — there never had been a beautiful Dobbs — and it was not her fault that she was so unfortunately frank, and never could and never did conceal her feverish eagerness to make desirable acquaintances, and to get into desirable sets. Until Anna came out she was invited only to the big functions to which the whole world went; and the hours she passed at them were not among the most blissful of her life. The people who were at first inclined to be kind to her for Peter’s sake, dropped off when they found how her eagerness to attract the attention of some one mightier made her unable to fix her thoughts on the friendly remarks that they were taking pains to make. In society she was absent-minded, fidgety, obviously on the look-out for a chance of drawing the biggest fish into her little net; but, wealthy as she was, she was not wealthy enough in an age of millionnaires, and not once during the whole of her career was a big fish simple enough to be caught.
Delphi Collected Works of Elizabeth von Arnim (Illustrated) Page 26
